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Monday, 13 March 2017

The solution to command crate schematic OCD

Disintegrate all the things!*

I have a confession to make: I suffer from command crate OCD. You know those schematics that drop from command crates? Well, I want to collect them all. And because they typically drop on a character with a different crafting profession that they're meant for, I kept logging over and over to check my alts before I decided to claim or disintegrate them. It was starting to drive me crazy.

I was probably in the process of complaining about it when Conrad showed me a spreadsheet he made of all the armor schematics that drop from command crates. It was brilliant! I quickly got to work and added tabs for cybernetics, relics and weapons, so the document truly covered all schematics that can drop from the crates. Then I filled it with X's of the schematics I already had and pinned the document to my taskbar. No more relogging to alts when opening command crates!

I'm sharing the empty file here with you, just in the off chance that you suffer from command crate OCD as well and want to make your life easier.

You can find the file here. Use "File > Download as" to download, so you can customize it to your liking and fill in the boxes of schematics you have collected.

Extra info

In case you are reading this and there are a lot of question marks appearing above your head, I will try to give some examples of how to use the spreadsheet.

I would also stress that I designed it in a way that's logical to me, but you're free to totally customize it to your own needs. For instance, I thought about creating a tab for each crafting profession, but that's not really how I think of them (plus it would mean a lot more tabs and a lot more tables). But if that's what you'd rather use, by all means, rearrange the tables and make it!

Also note that I've only included schematics from command crates in this spreadsheet, so not the schematics that drop from operation bosses or are granted for completing warzone quests. The reason is simple: this is just meant to stop you from having to log over to alts when opening command crates. But if you want to transform it into your own super spreadsheet with all the 230+ rating schematics there are in the game, be my guest.

Click to enlarge

Above you see the first tab, filled in with the armor schematics of my armormech. I've sorted the crafting panel on Rating to make it easier and then simply put an X in for every schematic I had. The Asylum and Onslaught schematics are for armormech and the Aegis and Expert ones for synthweaving. As you can see the in-game names are currently messed up for rating 240, hence the clarification of the craft of that tier (there are still four different looking 240 armor sets).

The next tab is for cybernetics (biochem and cybertech), or what you'd refer to as 'jewellery' in most MMOs. Green is cybertech, yellow is biochem. Not much else to say here.

Then there's the relics tab. Not all relics are actually useful in the game, but I decided to include them all for the sake of inclusiveness. Of course you can just delete the tabs you decide not to collect.

A question that comes up in my guild chat a lot is "should I claim or disintegrate relic X?" The answer is that the relics of Devastating Vengeance and Primeval Fatesealer are suboptimal in all thinkable situations, so they are always safe to disintegrate (of course whether you do so will depend on how far your collect-them-all OCD reaches). The "clicky relics" are also not used a lot, but they are optimal in certain specific situations, so min maxers might still be looking for them.

Edit: Devastating Vengeance is no longer suboptimal for healers once they're equipped in full 246 rating gear or higher. Healers that do this swap out Serendipitous Assault and need to rebalance their stats: a bit more alacrity so they don't go to deep into crit diminishing returns.

The last tab is for weapons (both main hands and off hands). I've listed them per tier and per tier artifice first and then armstech. The names are listed in the order they show up in the crafting panel if you filter on Rating (alphabetically under each category).

I'm not really sure I want to collect all the weapons, because they are not that useful, and there are just so many! A lot of people just disintegrate the weapons, which is totally legit. It's up to you; the tab is there just in case.

That was it! I hope this post was of use to you. Do you suffer from command crate OCD? Let's talk about it in the command section.

Edit: Updated with 246 rating gear on July the 3rd, 2017.

* If you are wondering what that pile of brown ehh (I'll leave it up to your imagination) is, well, that's what command crates actually look like when you remove their halo. Go on, check those icons in-game. And people wonder why they drop trash...

It's really nice that crafting once more is useful - even at endgame - and I definitely enjoy getting 'free' schematics as well! Crafting has helped my guild as a whole with raiding, even though the gear gap between story and veteran mode is still very noticeable.

Well, these simply drop from crates, which you get for doing *anything* in the game at level 70, so collecting these won't cost me any extra time. I get the crates either way, I'm just saving time not having to relog to alts. At least there's that.

Might well use something like this, Rav, if I get many schematics. So far I#ve only got one so I knew exactly which alt could make it. I tend to have a handful of crafter maxed out - but of course if I get the same schematic twice that would be a problem.

Forgot to ask, (1) if you remove the schematic from the crate, can you still send it to an alt? (2) for the alt to open the crate, does the alt have to be lvl 70? Not all my crafter are max level except in crafting.

Hey Roland, you cannot send the command crates themselves to alts. They stay in the command stash (which is its own interface and goes per character) until you open them and they disappear. When you open a crate, you get the items from it in that same interface (it can hold up until 10) and then you can pick for each of them if you want to claim them (then they go into your real inventory with all your other stuff) or disintegrate them (then they are destroyed but you get extra command XP). Schematics that you claim are bound to legacy. That means that you can mail it to alts or put it in the legacy bank, but you cannot give, trade or sell it to other players. So if you already have a schematic, it is best to disintegrate it.

The schematics themselves have no level requirement, just a crafting tier requirement. So you can safely send them over to your low level crafting alts and as long as they have crafting maxed out they can learn them. In fact, I do this myself all the time!

I hope that answered your question. If it didn't, ask me again and I'll try to do better! If you start playing SWTOR again, you'll no doubt get some more crates and schematics soon. It's all a bit abstract when typing it out, but once you've opened some crates I'm sure it will make more sense. :)